I have a dual role. I'm the performance director of British Cycling and I'm also the team principal of Team Sky, which is one of the world's largest professional cycling teams. On a day-to-day basis, my responsibility is about ensuring that we're doing absolutely everything we can with the resources available to help support every single rider to be at their absolute best for 2012.
We work on the fundamental belief that people achieve excellence when they have certain elements in place, most important being ownership of their training programmes. We're expert advisors who support them in a host of areas, from psychological support, to nutrition, to physical fitness, to strength and conditioning. We then encourage them to achieve personal excellence, which puts them in control of their own destiny.
Managing both a professional and a national team is certainly a challenge, but a fantastic one. We've been able to create a professional cycling team which is allied to the Olympic programme. The whole thing is a brilliant, broad-ranging challenge, with aims of winning the Olympic Games and the Tour de France, and also increasing the number of people who cycle in the UK.
We won 14 cycling medals in Beijing. If the cycling team had declared independence and become a nation, we'd have beaten the entire French team!
One of my most outstanding Olympic memories was watching Jason Queally in Sydney. He got up on the very first night of the Games, beat the long-standing champion and won the gold medal in the 1km time trial. That was such a defining moment, as it really marked the start of the whole development of the British cycling team.
You can apply for Olympic tickets at tickets.london2012.com
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